Last year, $7 billion were spent on dietary supplements in the United States.
Much of that money went to network marketing companies that stake their business
existence on the right to sell these products.

But this right is under threat. A public relations war against dietary supplements
is being waged, and legislation is pending in Congress and even being drafted
under the auspices of the United Nations to limit the sale of these products.

The Drive to Regulate Supplements

In May, the National Institutes of Health issued a draft statement at their
annual State of the Science Conference calling for greater government regulation
over the sale of harmless supplements. It is important that the FDAs
purview over these products be authorized and implemented, they wrote.

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal published a cover story that
alleged dietary supplements were harmful to Americans health. But a careful
read of the article reveals that it was based on a handful of discredited studies
and ignored the mountains of research being published that clearly show many
supplements improve health and rarely cause harm.

Overseas, a commission known as Codex Alimentarius has been drafting regulations
to limit access to dietary supplements around the world.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is the international body sponsored by the
United Nations and World Health Organization to set global food standardsand
their guidelines for dietary supplements are way out of sync and more restrictive
than the current standards in the United States.

They could also trump U.S. laws protecting the right to sell supplements.

Dr. Matthias Rath, protégé of two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling,
has been warning the world about both domestic and international threats to
the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) for close to a decade.
DSHEA is the law that since 1994 has protected the rights of Americans to buyand
selldietary supplements. If you are currently running a business that
receives most of its revenue from the sale of micronutrients, you owe your livelihood
to the existence of DSHEA.

But many researchers believe that these supplements ultimately cut into the
sale of pharmaceutical drugs because they serve as an effective form of preventive
medicine that artificial drugs cannot compete with. So it shouldnt be
a big surprise that drug companies have been lobbying Congress for the past
decade to undo the protections that DSHEA gives both businesses and the public
with regard to the availability of supplements.

An End Run Around National Autonomy

Thus far, those domestic attempts have failed to pass Congress. Even with NIH
recommendations like the one published in May and non-stop lobbying of Congress
by pharmaceutical giants for restrictions on dietary supplements, attempts to
gut the landmark bill have yet to succeed.

But while pharmaceutical companies have failed in the United States, they have
succeeded in restricting the sale of supplements in much of Europe. And with
Codex, those restrictions could spread here. As a member of the World Trade
Organization, the United States is required to follow Codexs guidelines
on dietary supplements. The WTO requires the United States to harmonize
its trade policies with other countries. Free access to supplements in the U.S.
could be labeled an unfair trade advantage in the WTO, leading to the elimination
of DSHEAs protections and restricting the sale of supplements here.

True, Codex cannot directly impose a finalized standard on the USA, because
harmonization works indirectly, warns John Hammell of the International
Advocates for Health Freedom. The U.S. could refuse harmonization
but then we would be hit with trade sanctions. In theory, Congress could accept
the sanctions and refuse to harmonize, but the sanctions can be imposed across
a broad spectrum of industries unrelated to supplements, so the reality is that
no country can afford to accept this penalty. This threat would put immense
lobbying pressures on Congress to change our laws.

Follow the Money

Meanwhile, the public relations campaign being waged against dietary supplements
attempts to dress up these products as somehow dangerous to consumers, even
though there is no credible evidence showing that supplements do any harm. While
pharmaceutical drugs, properly prescribed, are the third leading cause of death
in America, dietary supplements simply dont kill people. Yet the Wall
Street Journal made the threat of supplements front-page news.

Why the sudden backlash against supplements?

The reason is that $7 billion. If people are buying supplements from network
marketers and getting healthier as a result, it ultimately means they wont
be at their local drug store purchasing pharmaceutical products to treat their
symptoms. This is why the pharmaceutical industry has taken such an intense
interest in the regulation of supplements.

Pharmaceutical giants are not spending millions lobbying Congress out of charity
or to benefit the health of the average American. Theyre doing it to protect
their bottom line. Network marketing companies that sell alternative health
products are a direct threat to that bottom line.

Despite the efforts of natural health advocates like Matthias Rath, M.D., who
has campaigned against Codex and for DSHEA for more than a decade, the pharmaceutical
giants have been gaining ground. Only time will tell if the network marketing
community takes the threat seriouslyor if they allow a segment of their
industry to disappear with the stroke of a Presidential pen some time in the
near future.

DON KARN is a long-time corporate officer in
network marketing and serves on the Board of Directors
of Gabriel Media Group, Inc., publishers of Networking Times.